{"id":37127,"date":"2018-08-29T06:35:06","date_gmt":"2018-08-29T11:35:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=37127"},"modified":"2018-08-29T06:35:06","modified_gmt":"2018-08-29T11:35:06","slug":"the-road-away-from-fossil-fuels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=37127","title":{"rendered":"The road away from fossil fuels"},"content":{"rendered":"

The road away from fossil fuels<\/a><\/h3>\n
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\"\"Katowice. Photo by Jadwiga (Flickr)<\/div>\n

President Andrzej Duda\u2019s authoritarian government can expect a rough political ride in December, when politicians, diplomats and campaigners stream into Katowice, Poland, for the next UN summit on climate change.<\/p>\n

Poland\u2019s so-called climate policy \u2013 to aim for \u201ccarbon neutrality\u201d by discounting emissions from the coal industry with carbon sucked up by its forests \u2013 will face richly-deserved criticism. How loudly that will be heard on the streets is a different matter: Poland\u2019s parliament has banned \u201cspontaneous\u201d gatherings in Katowice during the summit.<\/p>\n

Donald Trump, who last year withdrew the US from the 2015 Paris agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, will also be the target of derision, not only from demonstrators but from some politicians inside the talks. The main business at Katowice (the 24th conference of parties to the 1992 Rio climate convention, or COP24) will be to finalise a \u201crulebook\u201d to monitor government promises to cut greenhouse gas emissions (\u201cnationally determined contributions\u201d or NDCs) made in Paris.<\/p>\n

The Paris agreement acknowledged that global temperatures should be kept \u201cwell below\u201d 2 degrees higher than pre-industrial levels, and that 1.5 degrees is preferable. Campaigners use every phrase in the document to challenge pro-fossil-fuel policies; to resist attempts to make the global south pay the price for warming; and to promote \u201cjust transition\u201d that combines the move from fossil fuels with struggles for social justice.<\/p>\n

While fighting all these battles, it\u2019s important not to neglect the larger picture. The Paris agreement is most significant not as a beacon around which the world can gather to stop climate change, but as the outcome of a disastrous process of failure to reverse the growth of fossil fuel consumption, the main cause of warming. At Paris, the idea of binding targets for greenhouse gas emissions reductions was finally abandoned, in favour of voluntary commitments.<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The road away from fossil fuels Katowice. Photo by Jadwiga (Flickr) President Andrzej Duda\u2019s authoritarian government can expect a rough political ride in December, when politicians, diplomats and campaigners stream into Katowice, Poland, for the next UN summit on climate change. Poland\u2019s so-called climate policy \u2013 to aim for \u201ccarbon neutrality\u201d by discounting emissions from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[10939,113,21431,141,7844,328,11348,1046,16940,21430],"class_list":["post-37127","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","tag-andrzej-duda","tag-carbon-emissions","tag-carbon-neutrality","tag-climate-change","tag-donald-trump","tag-fossil-fuels","tag-paris-climate-agreement","tag-poland","tag-red-pepper","tag-simon-pirani"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37127","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37127"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37127\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37128,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37127\/revisions\/37128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}